Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the fatal gun-running scheme known as “Fast and Furious.” The previous Friday, Holder had conveniently dumped 1,400 pages of Department of Justice (DOJ) internal emails that contradicted the DOJ’s February letter to Congress denying that the DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had “sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons” to suspicious people. Holder was even forced to withdraw the letter from Congress due to its blatant lies. As it turns out, not only did the DOJ put 2,000 high-powered guns directly into the hands of Mexican drug cartel agents, but cartel agents used two of these rifles to gun down Border Patrol Special Agent Brian Terry.
Holder was combative during the testimony. While refusing to admit any personal knowledge of “Fast and Furious” during its implementation and accusing Republicans of “politically motivated ‘gotcha’ games,” he openly refused to turn over specific DOJ internal emails that could show his own personal knowledge and complicity. During one exchange, Rep. Darrell Issa compared Holder to Nixon AG John Mitchell, since Mitchell also withheld documents from Congress. This infuriated Holder, and the following exchanged ensued:
HOLDER: “Have you no shame?”
ISSA: “Have you no shame?”
HOLDER: “The reference to John Mitchell — think about that. At some point, as they said in the McCarthy hearings, have you no shame?”
First of all, Mitchell — who got snared in the senseless crimes of Watergate —desegregated the public schools without violence or bloodshed. No federal agent died as a result of his actions. Holder can’t say the same thing.
While The New York Post accurately reported the full exchange in a December 8 opinion piece by Michael Walsh, The New York Times initially reported that Rep. Issa never responded to Holder’s grandiose “Have you no shame?” reference to the McCarthy hearings, only issuing a correction two days later.
Just as The New York Times personally attacked Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954 instead of studying the substantive charges of communism that he leveled (which have since been vindicated by decrypted Soviet messages), The Times has completely ignored the larger implications of “Fast and Furious.” As CBS has reported, this program was clearly contrived to promote gun control. ATF emails state they would use “Fast and Furious” to “argue for controversial new rules about gun sales” without publicly disclosing their own involvement. The real question is if Obama and Holder have any shame and if Federal Agent Brian Terry’s death can be vindicated by Holder’s resignation.
Roger Stone is a well-known Republican political consultant and is a veteran of eight national Republican presidential campaigns. He’s also the men’s fashion correspondent for The Daily Caller and the editor of Stonezone.com.